A Comic Company That Turns the Gender Gap on its Head

In addition to her duties as the Associate Marketing & Publicity Manager at First Second, Gina Gagliano also maintains the First Second blog. It is there that she gives fun insights in to the world of “big city publishing” and the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of being in said publishing.

First Second employs a lot of women — we’re all girls in this office, barring Mark! And our parent company similarly — eight employees, two guys. And their parent company too — 135 employees, 28 guys.

Here is a list of women who have worked on books for us already: Sara Varon, Danica Novgorodoff, Jessica Abel, Jane Yolen, LeUyen Pham, Carla Jablonski, Susan Kim, C.C. Colbert, Faith Erin Hicks, Hilary Florido,Vera Brosgol, MK Reed, Jen Wang, and our colorist, Hilary Sycamore. Almost all of them have done more than one book for us — or they’re working on another book now.

Here is a list of women who have books coming up from First Second in the next few years: Lark Pien, Lucy Knisley, Prudence Shen, Maris Wicks, Cecil Castellucci, Molly Crabapple, Mariko Tamaki, Jillian Tamaki, Angie Wang, Colleen AF Venable, Chun Yu, and Sungyoon Choi, plus more from Sara Varon, Jane Yolen, LeUyen Pham, Vera Brosgol, MK Reed, Jen Wang and Faith Erin Hicks. (This is not a complete list of female creators we’ve currently got signed up to do books for us, just so you know.)

The reason I find this so surprising is that, when you look at the gender numbers posted by the Big Two, you a distinctly different picture. I’m willing to bet that First Second probably has a higher percentage of female readers than the Big Two as well.